11/7

After sitting at my spot for 15 minutes, I noticed many new aspects of the area around me. I had thought the water in the pond at my site was static and unmoving, but I noticed that the surface is constantly in motion. There was evidence of human presence at my site as well. Someone had littered an old couch cushion and a small tire that were sitting in the mud at the edge of my pond. It was nice to take a moment and be silent. There were robins chirping, and I noticed during the 15 minutes that I had become covered with small burrs, from a plant I discovered was called “beggartick”, and was growing everywhere around me. My site had become much less green since I last went, and the vegetation was now made up of woody, dry stems, with only the duckweed covering the pond and a few grasses on the shore being green. It was much easier to spot birds because of the lack of leaves on all the trees. The buckthorn berries growing around me were also much more visible. Overall, my spot looked the way a forest does before it snows-dead leaves everywhere and all the plants and animals getting ready for cold weather.